No worries!
As an update - what an exhilarating final game!
I started with 2 team members I hadn't used much, especially at the start of games (Dispatcher and Researcher) due to how the starting hands landed. It was a bit of unfamiliar territory and I had to make some massive early calls, but I completed both objectives, and HYPED to have 'won' the game.
I noted down the 6 things that would have altered my board/cards permanently, but I might just leave it as it is so I can play that final game again in the future.
In case anyone's interested, my outcome for the final thing you do: [o]I finished with a score of 537. I think pretty respectable as I had some DISASTER games (just bad card luck mostly) but overall think I played it well![/o]
A few full-on spoilery conclusions/thoughts from my 18 games below:
[o]
- I can't imagine doing that game without my Scientist, or losing her even. She played 16/18 of my games.
- I've played dozens of regular games with all the expansions and knew the importance of setting up my network of structures to move around the board easily. This helped MASSIVELY. I think you could end up with a real uphill battle if you didn't know how fundamental this is to Pandemic.
- Part of the above was having 5 permanent research stations and all 4 vaccine factories. They were also mostly in the same cities, which worked great.
- The moment when the FADED were revealed was a proper W..T..F.. moment. I've played Pandemic for years and have avoided EVERYTHING about Legacy S1 knowing I'd eventually get it, and it really left me open-mouthed. It threw the whole game up in the air for me. What an amazing addition.
- I got really lucky with the Paranoid Solider fallout as my Solider was the one with Paramilitary Escort upgrade! The game before that one, he'd single-handedly saved the day using that upgrade! The people I've read that put that upgrade on the Quarantine Specialist or Scientist must have fallen over when the Traitor bombshell dropped!
- Writing down A LOT was instrumental. Tracking which cities came out of the infection deck after each turn, which then reappeared etc could help you plan ahead, and I agree with someone I read saying that sort of thing was totally in the spirit of the game. It's a bit OTT for many players I suspect though.
- Likewise, tracking the likelihood of Epidemic cards was helpful. It was a cushion knowing you had say 2 players turns coming up where you KNEW it was impossible to pull an Epidemic card based on how the game is set up with 1 in each of the 5 piles of says 8-10 player cards.
- The whole 'search' mechanic was absolutely fantastic. And the importance of Atlanta, where your City Zero was etc was just so delicious.[/o]
As my final action before completing the [o]COdA stockpile search[/o] objective (having already [o]vaccinated all my faded cities[/o]) I used the role-switch event to substitute in my game MVP (Seko the Scientist) so she be the one that effectively ended the game. So damn satisfying.
All in all, I always wondered why Legacy was #2 game of all time on BGG, but Pandemic original was down at #138.. could it really be that much better?
The answer is yes, the game is an absolute work of art, and I'll be thinking about the whole experience of it for a long while.
Also thanks to this forum/community overall for the wealth of rule-clarifications and disciplined used of spoiler tags. Well done all.
As an update - what an exhilarating final game!
I started with 2 team members I hadn't used much, especially at the start of games (Dispatcher and Researcher) due to how the starting hands landed. It was a bit of unfamiliar territory and I had to make some massive early calls, but I completed both objectives, and HYPED to have 'won' the game.
I noted down the 6 things that would have altered my board/cards permanently, but I might just leave it as it is so I can play that final game again in the future.
In case anyone's interested, my outcome for the final thing you do: [o]I finished with a score of 537. I think pretty respectable as I had some DISASTER games (just bad card luck mostly) but overall think I played it well![/o]
A few full-on spoilery conclusions/thoughts from my 18 games below:
[o]
- I can't imagine doing that game without my Scientist, or losing her even. She played 16/18 of my games.
- I've played dozens of regular games with all the expansions and knew the importance of setting up my network of structures to move around the board easily. This helped MASSIVELY. I think you could end up with a real uphill battle if you didn't know how fundamental this is to Pandemic.
- Part of the above was having 5 permanent research stations and all 4 vaccine factories. They were also mostly in the same cities, which worked great.
- The moment when the FADED were revealed was a proper W..T..F.. moment. I've played Pandemic for years and have avoided EVERYTHING about Legacy S1 knowing I'd eventually get it, and it really left me open-mouthed. It threw the whole game up in the air for me. What an amazing addition.
- I got really lucky with the Paranoid Solider fallout as my Solider was the one with Paramilitary Escort upgrade! The game before that one, he'd single-handedly saved the day using that upgrade! The people I've read that put that upgrade on the Quarantine Specialist or Scientist must have fallen over when the Traitor bombshell dropped!
- Writing down A LOT was instrumental. Tracking which cities came out of the infection deck after each turn, which then reappeared etc could help you plan ahead, and I agree with someone I read saying that sort of thing was totally in the spirit of the game. It's a bit OTT for many players I suspect though.
- Likewise, tracking the likelihood of Epidemic cards was helpful. It was a cushion knowing you had say 2 players turns coming up where you KNEW it was impossible to pull an Epidemic card based on how the game is set up with 1 in each of the 5 piles of says 8-10 player cards.
- The whole 'search' mechanic was absolutely fantastic. And the importance of Atlanta, where your City Zero was etc was just so delicious.[/o]
As my final action before completing the [o]COdA stockpile search[/o] objective (having already [o]vaccinated all my faded cities[/o]) I used the role-switch event to substitute in my game MVP (Seko the Scientist) so she be the one that effectively ended the game. So damn satisfying.
All in all, I always wondered why Legacy was #2 game of all time on BGG, but Pandemic original was down at #138.. could it really be that much better?
The answer is yes, the game is an absolute work of art, and I'll be thinking about the whole experience of it for a long while.
Also thanks to this forum/community overall for the wealth of rule-clarifications and disciplined used of spoiler tags. Well done all.
